The war between Apple and Samsung over design and technology patents has cast Samsung as the underling, while Apple is painted as pushing at the edges of innovation. Ahh what a short sighted world we live in, I’d argue with such commentary, going so far as to say that most commentators have things wrong, very wrong.

While Samsung may have a little eggroll on it’s face over claims of plagiarism, the Korean consumer electronics behemoth is definitely no slouch on the technology front, winning the much more important war on patent innovations, particularly when it comes to 4G and it’s application in the mobile device wars.

4G isn’t so much a new technology but a better use of existing technologies, Samsung has been working on 4G since 2005 and has pretty much perfected it’s use in mobile devices. The higher and more responsive – up to 10 x 3G – bandwidth of 4G is well suited to tablets and smartphones.

In Australia, Telstra has the largest geographic coverage in 4G and has been upgrading mobile cell towers to 4G since 2010, with a consumer roll-out from late in 2011. The benefits of running mobile devices on 4G are real, the simultaneous speed is pretty outstanding :: Read the full article »»»»

Australian consumer watchdog Choice says locals are paying twice as much as they should for computer hardware, software and digital downloads. In it’s latest research – The Digital Price Divide – the consumer group says Australian prices for products such as music, personal computers, console games and computer software are on average 50 per cent higher than those in the United States.

In a submission to the parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing, the group noted that across 44 software products, Australian prices were 34 per cent more expensive than comparative overseas prices. Choice also found that Australians are paying 51% more for iTunes music, 88% more for Wii games and 41% more for computer hardware than US consumers.

One piece of Microsoft software was nearly $9,000 more expensive in Australia than the United States, Choice said via it’s website that it would be cheaper to pay someone’s wage and fly them to the US and back twice, and get them to buy the software while overseas :: Read the full article »»»»

More than three decades after it’s 1978 launched, Minitel, a French forerunner to the internet we know and love today – at its height was installed in 9 million French homes – will shut down for good tomorrow.

Once at the cutting edge of technology, the Minitel allowed users in France to check the news, search phone directories, buy train and plane tickets, make restaurant reservations and even take part in online sex chats long before similar services existed elsewhere.

The advent of the internet made the Minitel’s dial-up connection and black-and-white screen obsolete, despite some pretty vocal protests, Minitel’s operator France Telecom-Orange has decided to finally pull the plug.

Developed by France Telecom in the 1970s and freely distributed, the Minitel reached its height in the early 1990s, with 26,000 services available and annual revenues of about a billion euros, about $AU1.2 billion.

Today only about 400,000 terminals are still in use, many of its services – including booking Air France and railway tickets – have been discontinued and in 2010 the system brought in only 30 million euros in revenues. With 85 per cent of those revenues going to service providers, France Telecom has decided the cost of maintaining the network is no longer financially viable :: Read the full article »»»»

There is little question that the Apple iPad has taken over the galaxy, the ultimate in mobile computing. The experts – PC World – say that there are a heap of reasons to rely soley on the iPad as your primary mobile computing device. Apple’s iPad has a more functional interface than a netbook, it’s lighter and has a longer battery life.

Technology is only any good if it fulfils a human need, the iPad seems to cope rather well with fulfilment. Surfing, communicating, imagery, sound and motion, the iPad was designed as an interface to all the human bits that make us smile day to day.

The German founder of file-sharing website Megaupload has been granted bail by a New Zealand court after a month in custody. Kim Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, is preparing to fight US extradition hearings over internet-piracy and money-laundering charges. The 38-year-old was arrested on January 20 after about 70 armed New Zealand police raided his country estate at the request of the FBI.

Prosecutors say Dotcom – also known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor – was the ringleader of a group that netted $US175 million ($164 million) since 2005 by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorisation.Dotcom’s lawyers say the company simply offered online storage and that he strenuously denies the charges. Read the full article »»»»

With growing concerns over the very real threat of “cyber warfare,” militaries around the globe are racing to recruit specialised computer personnel, operatives they believe may be central to the conflicts of the 21st century. While money is plentiful for new forces of “cyber warriors,” attracting often individualistic technical specialists and hackers into military hierarchies is another matter.

Finding the people to command them is also tough. After a decade of messy and relatively low-tech ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some senior western officers are if anything less confident with technology such as smartphones and tablet computers than their civilian contemporaries.

Ironically, the earliest – modern – computers were developed by the military to crack codes, simulate nuclear explosions and communicate effectively through battle conditions. The Internet – our daily bread – grew out of a military research program, the wide open pockets of military technology spending gave us satnav, 747 Jumbos and sms.

With the Pentagon saying its computers are being attacked millions of times every day, time is short. “We are busy and we are getting busier every day,” Lt Gen Rhett Hernandez, a former artillery officer who now heads U.S. Cyber Command, told a cyber security conference in London last month organized by British firm Defence IQ. “Cyberspace requires a world-class cyber warrior … we must develop, recruit and retain in a different way to today.” Read the full article »»»»